We Need The Million Second Quiz In Our Lives, But We Don’t Need Its Stupid Questions

NBC’s new TV game show, The Million Second Quiz, which is hosted by Ryan “Perpetual Executive Producer” Seacrest,premiered last night and, I don’t want to sound overzealous, but we needed this show. What we don’t need, however, are the ridiculous questions that the contestants have to answer. Like, a million-second round of applause for the show’s creators for noticing that most of the game shows on TV aren’t very current. But, also, a million-second stone face to the writers of the quiz questions because (in my best parent voice) I’m not angry that the questions are ridiculous, I’m just disappointed.

I should point out that they are ultimately worth $2 million dollars, due to some mathematical calculations that I’m not really fit to explain. All I know is that, for most of each episode, two challengers compete by answering multiple choice questions better and faster than their opponent. In addition to the point value of each question, the player in the Money Chair also gains $1 for every tenth of a minute that they are still in the game. That’s right, they’re getting rich for just being alive and awake. (If this were 17th century Salem, I know exactly who would be on trial for witchcraft.) The person that the Money Chair contestant is competing against is called the Line Jumper, named so because they get to skip the line of people waiting to compete simply by playing along on the show’s phone app. And, as with most other game shows, there are a lot of “saves” that each contestant can use to make their life easier and potentially ruin the life of their opponent.

Now that we’re done with all of the boring stuff, let’s talk about why there were so many groan-worthy questions during the game. Like, I can’t even blame it on the fact that they’re running out of questions, since this was the very first episode. So, I’m just left to conclude that everyone who continues to watch this show will just have to learn to deal with questions like this:

I get it, quizzes are full of random questions. But I want you to go look your reflection straight in the eyes and tell yourself that this question didn’t make you roll your eyes. Yes, thank you game show gods for giving us some pop culture references that are actually current and topical, but there is a line, and this question is about 70% across it. Also a ridiculous question was the one about the supermodels. Oh, the supermodels.

Which supermodel who doesn’t have an insanely foreign-sounding name, accent and overall appearance wasn’t born in the U.S.? Is it…is it letter A? Oh, guys, I’m so nervous that it won’t be lett — oh, yeah, it’s letter A. Phew, that was a real close one there, wasn’t it?

We do, however, get some classic game show-esque questions like this one, which made me remember that the goal of this show is to be Who Wants to be A Millionairewith a hip replacement:

But then, just that quickly, we’re back at it again, talking about things like Dora the Explorer’s last name. For the record, both contestants got that questions wrong because, not only is it kind of silly, but I also think that it’s never even been revealed before.

But, if you like TV game shows and can manage to get through the questions that felt like they were written in the last few minutes of someone’s shift on a Friday afternoon, you’ll probably greatly enjoy this show. In the meantime, I’ll just be here thinking up questions that I think should be asked on the show in place of the ones they’ve got. Team work makes the dream work, you know?

I think this was a poor attempt to explain the bad show, with that many questions you have to keep them simple, it was more of a marathon of questions rather then a short and difficult jeopardy type game. But no one knows how to play the game, no one understood it, no one even cared, so when they asked how many inches are in a foot, i responded by changing the channel.